The Klondike Gold Rush: A Ton of Gear, Dead Horses and Few Fortunes

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In the summer of 1897 the ships Excelsior and Portland docked with holds full of raw gold, and Seattle's streetcar drivers, policemen, and even its mayor walked off the job. This episode separates the romantic myth of the Klondike from what the journey really demanded. The find itself came on August 16, 1896 at Rabbit Creek, made by George Carmack, Skookum Jim, and Tagish Charley, with the claim filed in Carmack's name because an Indigenous man's claim might not have been honored. The stampede followed because the panics of 1893 and 1896 had left the world starved for gold.

About 100,000 people set out and only 30,000 to 40,000 arrived. The Mounties required each traveler to haul roughly a ton of supplies, which meant relaying 65 pound loads over the Chilkoot Pass or wading the mud of the White Pass, then building boats to run the Yukon River. Dawson City greeted them with typhoid, scurvy, staked claims, and frozen ground that had to be thawed with fire. The episode also covers the displaced Han people, the women who earned more from laundry than men did from mining, and the sudden exit to Nome.

• Moving a ton of gear 50 miles in relays meant walking about 2,500 miles, and Tlingit packers could charge up to a dollar a pound for the final ascent.
• The White Pass became known as the Dead Horse Trail, and an April 1898 avalanche on the Chilkoot Pass killed more than 60 people.
• Guidebook shortcuts proved deadly: of roughly 1,660 people who left from Edmonton only 685 survived, and one Malaspina Glacier expedition came back with four men.
• Dawson City grew from about 500 people to 17,000 in two years, and gambler Sam Bonnifield won a single 200,000 dollar poker pot with four kings.
• The stampeders together spent more getting to the Klondike than the value of all the gold taken out between 1897 and 1901.